One spot to watch for change in the new year is the University System of Maryland, the network of a dozen public universities. It’s preparing to welcome back Robert Caret, former president of Towson University, to become chancellor, leader of the entire system. Since 2011 Caret has been president of the University of Massachusetts. Caret will replace William “Brit” Kirwan as chancellor. Like Caret, Kirwan proved himself as president of one of the system institutions – for Kirwan it was the University of Maryland-College Park – then went to another state – Ohio, in Kirwan’s case – before being invited back to Maryland as chancellor 12 years ago. Kirwan announced his intention to retire last May, and is likely to stay in the job during most of the spring semester.
As chancellor he led a redesign of science, technology, engineering, and math curricula; and pushed to expand online education and to make a bigger portion of financial aid based on a student’s need. We spoke with Kirwan in May.
Listen to our recent interview with incoming chancellor, Robert Caret, here.
This segment originally aired on May 20, 2014.
